Video: Mixing layer and vector masks

The next step of my adventures is to add the blue waves on the right side of her head that go over her ear. In case you are like a little bit vague about what I am talking about, let's go ahead and switch to the final version of the image. This is fish face, it's actually the Fish face.psd image, the version with the fish in brown, instead of blue. You can see how we have got these wavy lines. They are defined using a shape layer, essentially, which is a vector mask assigned to a dynamic fill layer.

The elusive alpha channel remains one of the most misunderstood yet powerful tools in Photoshop. Alpha channels are collections of luminance data that control the transparency of an image, and they inform just about every aspect of Photoshop. As he builds transitional blended layers, fashions a depth map, makes edge adjustments, and takes on extreme channel mixing, Omni Award-winning expert Deke McClelland teaches Photoshop users that where there's a will, there's a way. Photoshop CS3 Channels and Masks: Advanced Techniques covers mapping texture on an image, turning flesh into stone, using vector masks, working with all different channels, creating a rustic edge effect, and much more. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Mixing layer and vector masks

The next step of my adventures is to add the blue waves on the right side ofher head that go over her ear. In case you are like a little bit vague aboutwhat I am talking about, let's go ahead and switch to the final version of theimage. This is fish face, it's actually the Fish face.psd image, the versionwith the fish in brown, instead of blue.You can see how we have got these wavy lines. They are defined using a shapelayer, essentially, which is a vector mask assigned to a dynamic fill layer.

Then I added a gradient layer mask on top of the whole kit and caboodle. It'san amazing thing that you can combine vector masks and layer masks inside ofPhotoshop. I think, it's just utterly and completely fantastic.So let's go ahead and switch to the image at hand and this version of theimage, this catch-up document, is called Blue super suit.psd, found inside the15_paths folder. I am going to bring up my Layers palette right here, and Iwant you to go ahead and select the blue 2 layer, if it's not already selected.

I want you to press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, clickthe black/white icon, choose Solid Color because we are inventing another shape layer.Solid Color allows us to create a dynamic fill layer. Even though it's calledSolid Color, the result of the Solid Color is a dynamic fill, meaning that wecan edit that fill any time we like, just by double clicking on it.Here comes the New Layer dialog box and I am just going to call this whitenessbecause we are just filling this area with white. Use Previous Layer to CreateClipping Mask is now on, by default. Well, that is as it should be, so that'snice. These settings are fine for now, Normal, 100%, everything is okay. ClickOK and let's go ahead and make this layer white by clicking and dragging upinto the upper left corner of the big color field here; or you could set the R,G, and B values, all to 255 and then click OK.

Now we need to go ahead and mask the contents of this layer and we are going todo that using one of the paths in the Paths palette. So go over to the Pathspalette. You will see this path called waves, which are actually made up of abunch of sub-paths. Let me show you how I made it. I am not going to walkthrough the entire thing because it requires some patience, put it that way andI don't want to try your patience at this point. You can do it, if you want to. Here is how. I am going to first invent a new path by clicking on the little Create new pathicon down here at the bottom of the Paths palette. Actually, I am going toAlt+Click or Option+Click and I will say, new waves or something like that;although, I am only going to make partial progress. I click OK and let's goback to the Layers palette and turn off whiteness for a second, so we can seethrough to the underlying image. See what portion of the image, we want to select.

Switch back to the Paths palette. We have got new waves selected. I am going todraw this as a custom shape because there is a custom shape that draws wavesfor you. So I will go ahead and switch to the Custom Shape tool. Notice, by theway, I have gone ahead -- if you loaded my Deke keys. I have gone ahead andgiven this tool, a keyboard shortcut of U. I got rid of U for all the othertools, so that you don't cycle between them because really custom shape is thetool of tools, where the shape tools are concerned.Notice by the way, inside the options bar when any of the Custom Shape toolsare selected, you can also switch to the Freeform Pen tool, which is I havetold you I don't like one little bit; or to the wonderful standard Pen tool.

Let's switch to a different shape here and if you click the down pointingarrowhead, you will see the small collection of shapes that are installed alongwith Photoshop and load with Photoshop, by default.Click the right pointing arrowhead and choose All, so that you can see all ofthe shapes that are installed with the program. You don't want Append, you wantOK, just say OK because otherwise, you are going to duplicate a bunch ofshapes. Then you will look like crazy for the waves and let's see, where in theworld are the waves here?You can obviously make this drop down palette bigger by dragging the lower leftcorner, if you are so inclined, and there is waves right there. Go ahead andclick on it in order to make it active, then you can hide the shapes ofpalette, if you want to. Then you just drag, like so. I went ahead andactually, I don't think, I pressed the Shift key; I went ahead and left it alittle taller than it was wide, than it was originally drawn, that is to say.

I wanted more waves. You can see here my waves, they are actually morecontinuous, they continue on and on. So I went ahead and took these waves, Iselected them using the Path Selection tool or using the black Arrow tool,click and you will see that you select all of these paths together. Then if youpress and hold the Alt Key or the Option key on the Mac and then start draggingthese paths, you will clone them. I also press the Shift key, so that I coulddrag them exactly horizontally here.Then I will release the mouse button and then release both keys. I will zoom inand you can see that they don't really snap in place, actually, as they should.

So you got to zoom way in and then nudge the paths around using the Arrow tool.Bear in mind, when you are zoomed in, you are going to move one screen pixel,when you press the arrow keys. So it does give you more and more control, thefarther you zoom in.Then at this point, you can see that these edges don't really match theseedges. So these guys are aligned but these guys over here are not aligned; thefar left points are not aligned. So I went ahead and switched to the whiteArrow tool, clicked off the shapes, and then this is a tedious part, Click,Shift+Click, Shift+Click, Shift+Click, Shift+Click. If that's not tedious, Idon't know what is. Then press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac.

Now here is the deal. Photoshop doesn't really give you a lot of options forjoining paths together. That's really Illustrator's territory. If you want tobe able to combine paths with each other by, sort of, joining end points andthat kind of thing, the stuff that Illustrator excels at, then you are going toneed to create your paths inside Illustrator in the first place, copy them, andthen paste them into Photoshop as paths; but otherwise, you just have to dothis, kind of, monkey work inside Photoshop itself.

Then I coil them up, and I had to create some additional paths over here, andso on, and so on to create these waves. I am going to spare you the details. Ifyou want to investigate on your own, be my guest.Anyway, I have got these waves all ready to go. Let's go ahead and click onthem here inside the Paths palette. Let's return to the Layers palette, turnthe whiteness layer back on, and make sure it's active. Then go down here tothe layer mask icon and Ctrl+Click on it or Command+Click on that icon on theMac, in order to make these, in order to convert these guys to a vector mask orhere is another way to work.

We have already seen that way of Ctrl+ Clicking or Command+Clicking on the Mac,here is another way to work. We know, we are going to need a layer mask, aswell, in order to allow us to draw the gradient. So you could just click downhere. Even though, the paths are selected and highlighted and you can see themin everything. If you just click on this icon, the Add a layer mask icon, andnotice it says, Add layer mask, Photoshop will go ahead, if you click on it, itwill go ahead and add an empty layer mask.So it won't do anything. It's not actually masking at this point because it'sfilled with white. Now hover your cursor over the Add layer mask icon and itbecomes an Add vector mask icon because you have already got layer mask. Youcan only have one layer mask, but if you make another mask it's got to be a vector mask.

So now click on it and notice what happens. Photoshop is smart enough, youdon't have to Ctrl+Click this time. Photoshop is smart enough to go ahead andassign those path outlines as the vector mask. Now then we need to cut off thevector mask. Actually, let's go ahead and switch to the Full Screen mode, so Ican drag it down a little bit.We need to cut off the vector mask at the costume hem, so go to the blue 3layer right there. In order to make it active, just click on its vectorthumbnail and using the Arrow tool -- let's go ahead and press the A key againto get the black Arrow tool, go ahead and click on the path outline to selectit, press Ctrl+C or Command+C on the Mac in order to copy it.

Let's go back to the vector mask associated with the whiteness layer and we arerunning out of room in order to see the name of the whiteness, layer but youknow that's it right there. Go ahead and click on its vector mask thumbnail tomake it active and then press Ctrl+V or Command+V on the Mac in order to pastethat vector mask into place.Now it's currently set to the Add mode, as you can see up here in the optionsbar. Let's go ahead and switch it to the Subtract from shape area mode and youcan also do that just by pressing the minus key, if you want to. Plus and Minusare the keyboard shortcuts for the Add and Subtract modes up here. All right,so that's a beautiful thing.

Now we can go ahead and click on the vector mask thumbnail in order to turn offthose path outlines. Now what I am going to do with the layer mask active, youcan see it's active, let's go ahead and Shift+Tab away my palettes, so we canhide them from view and I am going to grab my Gradient tool. I am actuallygoing to zoom out, so we have some smoother transitions on screen here. SoPhotoshop is doing a better job of rendering the image.So I switch to the Gradient tool. Make sure the foreground color is black andthe background color is white, as it should be when you first create the layermask, even though it's not really the default settings. Otherwise, you canpress D for default and then X for black and white, like so. Go up here, makesure we have got our default settings going. If you want to just make sure youhave defaults, you can Right Click on the down pointing arrowhead and chooseReset tool, and you should see these settings, like so. So we are going to drawa black to white linear gradient, Normal, 100% Opacity, and so on.

Then I am just going to move my image over to the left, a little bit. I might,otherwise, end up getting an auto scroll and I would like to avoid that. Then Idrag from here to about here in order to fade the waves in and that's actuallynot enough. So let's try that longer, like so. That's better, I think. We endup creating these fading waving lines that are getting more and more opaque, asthey proceed over to the left, beautiful, wonderful.Now let's go ahead and bring back the Layers palette. Make sure that layer isactive. This isn't always and it wouldn't be active. Press the M key to switchback to the Marquee tool and then press the 7 key to lower the Opacity of thelayer to 70%. That is the result of combining a vector mask and a layer masktogether here inside the mighty and powerful Photoshop.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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